2001-09-19 - 11:08 p.m.

Aunt Annsie (4)

My sister Janis had been delighted to get letters from Aunt Annsie, and so got carried away with enthusiasm. She sent Aunt Annsie a bunch of letters, as well as some boxes of stuff very similar to the one I talked about in this entry.

Now it is one thing to send a box of plastic keychains and Xena videotapes to your brother who owns a comic store, but it is quite another thing to send something like that to your 68-year-old housebound aunt. Annsie then sent me a very angry letter, where she said, bluntly: "Why didn't you tell me that Janis was retarded??"

I explained to her that in spite of the box of weird stuff and the letters with third-grade handwriting, Janis was not retarded. Annsie then got a bee in her bonnet that she had to tell Janis how to straighten up and live her life. She advised Janis to lose some weight, buy some better clothes and get a real job.

I suppose that Annsie meant it as helpful advice, but her harsh tone made it seem like nothing less than an insult and that was how Janis took it. At the same time, Annsie was warning me that I should cut Janis off because she was looking to sponge off of me.

In retrospect, I can see that Annsie was reliving an episode from her past. Later she told me that her father had supported his "alky/whore sister and her five brats" for many years. Janis, on the other hand, has never asked for a handout from me, even though I know she has occasionally been short of money.

There was also some sort of misunderstanding involving Janis coming to visit her. Annsie did not want any visitors, and somehow she got the idea that Janis was planning on moving in with her and freeloading off her.

All in all, an ugly scene.

Was this the same woman who has generously offered to help us out "any way she could?" Sad to say, I realized that my aunt, who had seemed like such a nice, interesting woman was really a cranky, paranoid old lady.

But now there is a further realization: she was probably in a lot of pain, and perhaps knew she was dying. The long silences between her letters were probably stays in the hospital.

I wrote to Annsie for the last time in late May of this year. I told her that my father had died, and that while going through his things I had found her father's long-missing Patek Philippe watch. I offered to send it to her.

The day before my birthday I got a card from her, and there was a strange note with the card. She started out saying that she was sorry to hear about my father dying and that it must be hard to lose two parents so close together. She then said that she really didn't like my father, and she blamed him for deliberately estranging Mom from her family. She also warned me about Janis again, making the comment about her father's "alky/whore" sister. In addition, she said that she wanted the Patek Philippe watch.

I have to admit, that I was dragging my feet in responding to her letter. It was just so harsh, I didn't know how to take it. It was hardly a sympathy note. My reading of it was so cursory that I missed her saying she wanted the watch. I also hesitated in writing because I would have to tell her about the death of Aunt Janis.

Little did I realize that there was a time limit. It's something that's easy to forget: we ALL have a time limit.

And that is the end of my story about Aunt Annsie, a difficult, complicated person.

Yesterday, I got the Fed-Ex package from the lawyers from Connecticut. Along with the papers I had to sign and return, was a copy of Aunt Annsie's will.

Annsie was worth a lot of money when she died, and she left the bulk of her estate to her sister-in-law, who is 87 years old. Harry remembers Annsie telling him that she expected this woman, who was 20 years older than her, to outlive her, and she was right. Then again, Annsie had information that was not available to the two us.

She added a codicil to her will, dated August 27 leaving a couple items to Harry and myself. I get her father's coin collection, and Harry gets a grandfather clock and an antique table. To nobody's surprise, Janis is not mentioned at all.

The signature on the codicil is a feeble, barely legible scrawl, as opposed to the firm, forthright handwriting on the previous documents. Annsie must have been very, very sick when she signed it.

And there I'm feeling it again, that pang of regret. But what could I have done about a woman so bitter that she wouldn't even let me know she was dying? I think that's a puzzle that even someone a lot smarter than I wouldn't have been able to solve.